New Play Takes A Fascinating Stroll Along The Dimly Lit Path Of

Poe`s Life

December 02, 1987|By Richard Christiansen, Entertainment editor.

``Purloined Poe,`` at Lifeline Theatre, is an interesting stab at mixing the fact and the fictions of Edgar Allan Poe`s life.

Christina Calvit, the playwright, and Meryl Friedman, the director, have created for this Poe extravaganza a black, dimly lit space, with many doors and two performance levels, through and across which characters from Poe`s poem and stories mingle with their feverish author in the last days of his life.

The central Poe tale around which the play`s action swirls is ``The Murders in the Rue Morgue,`` featuring the ingenious sleuth C. Auguste Dupin.

As in the story, Dupin is in the middle of deducing the solution to the grisly Parisian murders when, to his surprise, he is visited, not by the character who is supposed to enter at that point in the mystery, but by the author himself, who suddenly bursts into the story on a desperate mission.

The tortured Poe, it develops, is being hounded by an eerie figure, named William Wilson, who continually mocks and betrays him, and Poe now wants Dupin to track down this grim, threatening visage. Astounded, Dupin nonetheless agrees and pursues his quarry through several scenes taken both from Poe`s real life and the fictions he wrote.

With a little hint from the techniques of ``Amadeus,`` Calvit has fashioned a mystery within a mystery that again probes the ever-intriguing theatrical enigma of illusion and reality. Is Dupin really a person, or does he exist only as a character on the printed page? Does Dupin truly travel through time and space to find the mystery of William Wilson, or does he merely imagine it? What was Poe really like?

The nature of Poe`s life, which ended after he had disappeared for several days, lends itself to such mystery, and Calvit`s script takes up many of the quandaries of Poe`s career, staging scenes in which his tragic marriage, tempestuous literary battles and profligate drinking are all examined.

Eric Haugen, the actor who plays Poe (and looks a little like Edward Albee), even gives a dramatic recitation, as Poe often did, of the full text of ``The Raven,`` complete with sound effects and spooky echoes from the rest of the cast.

Friedman-who collaborated with Calvit on two earlier literary adaptations for Lifeline, ``Pride and Prejudice`` and ``The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe``-has directed the play`s intermingling of fact and fiction with great vigor, though the staging on the narrow upper collar of performance space does tend to become awkward. Near the end, it also becomes dangerous, as Poe and the haunting Wilson engage in a jumping, tumbling and very scary sword duel devised by fight choreographer David Woolley.

The play`s opening is not clearly presented and its conclusion is a bit of a letdown, partly because Haugen`s last words as Poe are so softly spoken that it`s hard to hear what he`s saying.

But the fascination of the play`s conceit accumulates as the evening moves along, and the actors, some of them sporting French accents apparently acquired in the Maurice Chevalier school of advanced ooh-la-la, engage in the swiftly changing scenes with great zest.

Brian Parry, as the mastermind Dupin, is a lucid guide to the labyrinths of the real and fictional mysteries, and the other players, all taking several roles, change costumes and characters with practiced precision.

`PURLOINED POE`

A new play by Christina Calvit, adapted from works by Edgar Allan Poe, directed by Meryl Friedman, with a set and lights by Peter Gottlieb, costumes by Anne Jaros, fight choreography by David Woolley and musical direction by Michael O`Toole. Opened Dec. 1 at Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood Ave., and plays at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday, through Jan. 10. Length of performance: 2:10. Tickets are $12, or $6 for students and senior citizens. Group rates are also available. Phone 761-4477.